In the January/February 2006 Atlantic Monthly there is an interesting piece by P.J. O’Rourke (Two Cheers for Hypocrisy, pp. 154-6) reporting results from various surveys of teenage Americans’ views on public policy issues. O’Rourke’s main point is that kids may not be fully forthcoming with poll takers, and he gives us many humorously incongruous examples to support this contention. To me, the most striking thing about all these statistics is that, by and large, teenagers tend to have the same politics and values as their parents. I am a child of the 60′s, when we, the children of short-haired, narrow-tie, toe-the-line, World-War-II-Greatest-Generation parents seemed to have rejected most if not all of our parents’ value system.

But maybe not — we got married, jobs, mortgages, kids of our own, and at middle age we seem to be treading similar paths to the previous generation. With one perhaps central difference – The activist generation of the 60′s has become the nonprofit generation in middle age. We have led the unparalleled growth of nonprofits during our life times, which itself has been fueled by LBJ’s War on Poverty, and the Civil Rights, Women’s Rights, Native Americans Rights, Animal Rights and Environmental Conservation movements (among others). While many of us work directly in the nonprofit world, many more are involved on a voluntary basis. We give money and time to myriad causes (both social and political), we volunteer at church, at our kids’ schools, and at the neighborhood food pantry. We coach soccer, we tutor slow readers, and we serve as trustees on foundation, public charity, and even homeowner association boards. The list of our causes and commitments is endless.

And what of our kids? The next generation seems indeed to be carrying on our activist tradition. High schools are requiring community service for graduation, and colleges are increasingly looking for kids who have committed themselves to causes, not just grades. I recently looked through a stack of catalogues offering summer community service programs for teens, programs that would take them all over the country and the world — literally hundreds of offerings. There must be a huge market of kids who want to spend their summers making the world a better place (and incidentally learning about this diverse but shrinking world) instead of working on their tans.

So, perhaps the pollsters are right. The current crop of kids does hold its parents’ values. They too will be activists. That’s just fine with me.

Maister (see previous entry) has an interesting idea about strategy for professional services firms that I think has some applicability to nonprofits. He thinks that rather than a group of elites coming up with a high level plan (which he says never gets implemented anyway), try getting together the people who actually work together, in teams, with a coach from management, and ask them to articulate three-month goals in four key areas.

I have been fooling around with his four areas and have adapted them to a nonprofit context. Try this:

Assemble natural teams within your nonprofit, if you are big enough to have them. This could be program-by-program, site-by-site, or the whole board and staff in a small organization. Each team is a group that works together naturally in their daily work. Give each team four blank work plans (action, responsible, due date, etc.), each with a different heading as follows:

Increase Customer Satisfaction (which could be defined as clients, funders, members, etc., whoever the primary customers of that team are)

Increase Our Skills (which includes board or staff development that is needed to keep or develop a competitive advantage)

Improve Execution/Productivity (which means our systems, or how we carry out our work)

Win New Contracts, Donors, Business (which means growth of the activity or funding)

Come up with specific things that each team can do in three months in each area. The coach is not leading the process, but helping the folks come up with their work plan. The coach is also drawing connections between different work teams where similarities or possible collaboration between groups seem like a good idea.

The coach returns in three months to see how the team is doing and to develop a new work plan. This is an ongoing process that focuses on action as a way to strategy — the ultimate incremental approach. It stems from the belief that real live action, at the front line level, is what matters. Not too radical an idea, I believe.